Representing Maxwell Davies at his most engaged, it's an angry work that bears witness to "our disastrous interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan – comparable only to the folly of the medieval crusades and the Crimean war." Maxwell Davies describes himself as "not pacifist as such". The symphony is not an attack on the military, but an indictment of the governmental instigation of meaningless slaughter.

It plays continuously, and the score derives its tensions from the conflict between the main orchestra and a brass sextet placed above it on the platform. Their devil-may-care incursions into the opening allegro usher in a brutal development, the violence of which rapidly escalates as the sextet then kicks off a series of insolent, horribly insensitive marches.

After a savage climax, a slow, occasionally discursive string threnody takes over, during which the brass intrusions gradually lose some ferocity and the music moves towards a tentative nobility. Hardgoing for the performers (above all, the brass) the piece found the RLPO at their precise, committed best and Petrenko at his most intense.

I was left wondering, though, whether some of its fury spilled into the performance of Beethoven's Ninth that followed. Petrenko drives Beethoven hard – not necessarily a fault in itself – but the first two movements in this instance felt unduly pressured. The adagio, however, was beautifully focused and the finale wonderfully elated and engrossing. There was some terrific choral singing, too.